A closer look at 5 of the most successful batting partnerships for England in Tests and limited overs formats of the game.

As everyone knows, batting partnerships are the bedrock upon which big scores are made in any format of the game and over the course of their cricketing history, England have had plenty of such pairs.

However, the past decade or so has been far more demanding for most batting pairs, since there are three formats of the game to be played and that makes it tough to maintain the same level of consistency.

That being said, some batting pairs are special and successful across the three formats of the game. So, here is a look at 5 batting pairs who have scored the maximum runs together for England across the 3 formats of the game.

#5 Alastair Cook and Kevin Pietersen

Alastair Cook and Kevin Pietersen

Admittedly, Alastair Cook's career as a limited-overs batsman ended prematurely and even his biggest fans will accept that he remains a colossal batsman in Tests, but not so in the other formats of the game. However, despite that, his combined partnership record with England's best all-format batsman Kevin Pietersen across the three formats of the game is the 5th most prolific in the country's history. While Cook is a player who can play for hours and grind the opposition to dust, Kevin Pietersen was his polar opposite.

The right-hander was known for taking on the bowlers from the outset and irrespective of the format, he believed in going for his strokes. The two found great success while batting together, albeit most of it in Test cricket. They were involved in only 75 partnerships but the numbers are staggering. Cook and Pietersen scored 4389 runs in total and averaged a jaw-dropping 60.95. They made 15 hundred-plus stands, while 19 of them totalled 50 or more. A truly legendary pair.